News

(top) Maria Faticov and Adam Ekholm are heating the oak food web to study the impact of climate on phenology, microbes & insects. (bottom-left) Laura van Dijk’s new project on the spatial dynamics of systemic diseases in the wood anemone. (bottom-right) The impact of overwintering temperature on the spring phenology of insects on oak: waiting for thousands of leaf miners, gallers and their parasitoids to emerge.

(top) Meeting the Swedish King at the Royal Palace. I received a grant for höstförsöket (our new citizen science project) where we will collaborate with school children across Sweden to disentangle the relationship between climate, phenology and the oak food web. (bottom) A sprouting coffee bean in Gomma forest, where we launched our new SIDA-funded project on coffee pests and pathogens in SW Ethiopia.

Other major & minor events:

• Tarique Amin succesfully defended his master thesis on the interaction between a perennial herb, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and an aboveground herbivore
• Member of the PhD evaluation panel of Srisailam Marupakula  in Roger Finlay‘s research group at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala
• I started tweeting at www.twitter.com/aycotack

(top) Setting up a PlantPopNet population in the beautiful surrounding of Östra Ryd (North of Stockholm). (bottom-left) Looking at the vegetation and soil community associated with Plantago lanceolata in Åland, Finland, and comparing it to a study done 6 years ago by Stafva Lindström and Anna-Liisa Laine from Helsinki University. (bottom-right) Genetic analyses of the arbuscular mycorrhizal community in collaboration with Anders Andersson, Luisa Hugerth and Björn Lindahl at SciLifeLab.

Using swimming pools to detect the impact of dispersal limitation and plant genotype on the belowground community in a lovely experiment run by Pil Rasmussen at the James Hutton Institute: